Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is in the United States this week, following recent visits to Egypt and the United Kingdom.

One year after his first meeting with President Trump, Mohammed bin Salman continues to advance dramatic social and economic change in the Kingdom. Under the Crown Prince, Saudi Arabia has loosened some restrictions on the guardianship code and sidelined the religious police, imposed a 5% VAT and increased prices of fuel and electricity, hosted concerts and reopened cinemas, and announced that women will be permitted to seek drivers’ licenses this summer.

All of these issues are likely to be on the agenda for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s meetings in the United States. One day after the Crown Prince meets with President Trump, Atlantic Council experts will assess the immediate results and forecast the expected outcomes for the duration of the US visit. What are the key priorities for the various parties? What are the dynamics at play, particularly amidst a transition of US national security leadership? On Wednesday, Nabeel Khoury, Dov Zakheim, andRachel Brandenburg will discuss the top issues for the US-Saudi relationship, to include the war in Yemen, regional stability and GCC relations, and Saudi Vision 2030.

On January 31st, the Atlantic Council hosted a conversation with female thought leaders about the current state of the transatlantic relationship. In today’s turbulent political and security environment, the transatlantic alliance is at a critical crossroads. Pressing foreign policy and security challenges – from terrorism and Russian aggression to rising nationalism and waning confidence in institutions – have raised new questions about the future of the transatlantic alliance. This discussion features reflects on the past year, and discusses the future of NATO and US engagement in Europe, how the transatlantic partnership must adapt to today’s strategic environment, and the importance of female leadership in foreign policy and international security.

A conversation with:

Amb. Kristen SilverbergManaging Director
Institute of International Finance;Former US Ambassador to the European UnionMs. Julianne SmithSenior Fellow and Director, Transatlantic Security Program
Center for a New American Security

What are the short and long-term issues and potential fixes to election cybersecurity issues? Can paper ballots help restore faith in electronic voting? And how important is federal and state cooperation in cybersecurity policy formation?

In this episode, Jane Holl Lute, Atlantic Council board director and president and CEO of SICPA North America, and Anni Piiparinen, associate director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative, discuss critical issues surrounding election cybersecurity in the lead-up to the 2018 mid-term election and beyond.

What does the Trump administration’s strategy toward the Asia-Pacific mean for US-ROK relations? The December 12 forum, “Reimagining the US-Republic of Korea Partnership in the Trans-Pacific Century,” explored priorities for the US-ROK security alliance and economic partnership.

This podcast features the keynote address “Meeting the Foreign Policy Challenges of 2017 and Beyond” delivered by Secretary of State Tillerson and introduced by H.E. Yoon-je Cho and The Hon. Stephen Hadley.

The Transatlantic Forum on Strategic Communications and Digital Disinformation (StratCom) addressed the threat from hostile governments and radical groups who try to disrupt Western democracies through targeted digital disinformation campaigns. StratCom brought together key stakeholders, researchers, government officials, and members of civil society from the transatlantic community. It featured panels on: Social Media and Radicalization: The Challenge of ISIS and Other Non-State Actors; Straight Out of the Kremlin’s Toolkit: Strategies of State Actors; and Transatlantic Response to Disinformation: Paving a Way Forward.

On Wednesday August 9, 2017 the Atlantic Council held a conference call where the options and impacts of US sanctions to Venezuela were discussed. Speakers included: Francisco Monaldi, a fellow in Latin American Energy Policy at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, and David Mortlock, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center. The discussion was moderated by Jason Marczak, director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council.

The title of Sir Peter Westmacott’s new paper, Turkey’s European Journey, does not indicate where he thinks the country stands on that path, whether he believes Ankara is still headed toward Europe or whether it has turned off that road permanently.

In this episode, host Teri Schultz speaks to Sir Peter Westmacott, a distinguished ambassadorial fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Future Europe Initiative who has served as the United Kingdom’s ambassador to France, Turkey, and the United States, about how he sees Turkey’s current status under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Even as the pervasive and destructive capacity of cyberattacks becomes ever more evident with the alleged Russian meddling in European and American politics, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a former president of Estonia, marvels at the European Union’s under-performance in dealing with the threat.

In this episode, host Teri Schultz speaks to former Estonian President Toomas Ilves about Estonia’s internet adaptability, “Web War 1,” and Russia’s interference in the European political space.

Bearing a title that obligates him to manage evolving security threats, NATO Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges Sorin Ducaru has his hands more than full. With the threat landscape against the alliance changing constantly in unpredictable ways, many of them breaking new terrain in warfare, Ducaru and his staff have to be prescient, agile, and humble about their abilities to predict what’s next.

In this episode, host Teri Schultz speaks to NATO Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges Sorin Ducaru about how the alliance is approaching all its new threats and adapting its mindset in some surprising ways.

It’s not a secret that expatriate Americans, along with Europeans, tend to feel more closely aligned with the Democratic Party in the United States. However, Michael Kulbickas, chairman of Republicans Overseas, says he has spent many years hoping a candidate as transformative as Donald Trump would come along.

In this episode, host Teri Schultz speaks to Michael Kulbickas, Chairman of Republicans Overseas about support for Trump in Europe and the role that Republicans Overseas is playing in bringing the US and Europe closer together.

On Monday, June 5, 2017 the Atlantic Council held its annual Distinguished Leadership Awards. Each year the Atlantic Council honors several distinguished leaders for their versatile contributions to the strengthening of the transatlantic relationship. The event convenes an elite audience of some eight hundred guests from more than fifty countries, including the highest level of government, business, military, media, and civil society leaders.

The 2017 Distinguished Leadership Awards honored the following individuals:

On Monday, June 5, 2017 the Atlantic Council held its annual Distinguished Leadership Awards. Each year the Atlantic Council honors several distinguished leaders for their versatile contributions to the strengthening of the transatlantic relationship. The event convenes an elite audience of some eight hundred guests from more than fifty countries, including the highest level of government, business, military, media, and civil society leaders.

The 2017 Distinguished Leadership Awards honored the following individuals:

Latin America, with its history of female heads of state, seems to be a rising global leader in terms of notable women in top-level leadership roles. What is the region’s secret sauce? Does this phenomenon translate to the empowerment of women throughout Latin American societies? And are women rising to the top across sectors?

On May 31, 2017,the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center held a discussion on the realities of women in business and politics throughout the region and discussed concrete tools to guide the empowering of female leadership. The event launched our latest report, “Women’s Leadership in Latin America: The key to growth and sustainable development”.

Our guest this week for a special Women’s Day episode of Channeling Brussels is Ambassador Marriet Schuurman, NATO’s special representative for “Women, Peace and Security”, tasked with helping implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. The measure obligates UN member governments to elevate the concerns and well-being of women and children, to work to prevent violations of women’s rights and gender-based violence, to increase the involvement of women in peace negotiations and post-conflict reconstruction.

The Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands presented the second edition of the Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations on Wednesday, February 8 at the Atlantic Council.

Samantha Power gave her final speech as US Ambassador to the United Nations at the Atlantic Council on January 17, outlining the threat that Russia poses to the rules-based international order and what must be done to address that threat.

While the entire world carefully watches how 2017 unfolds, especially developments between the White House and the Kremlin, the Baltics are among those with the most finely-tuned binoculars. Worst-case scenarios may be simply hypotheses for debate in other countries, but in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania they are part of daily geopolitical calculations as the Baltics navigate a very fine line of making sure their allies stay on high alert for Russian interference without portraying themselves as unduly alarmist or vulnerable.

In this episode, host Teri Schultz speaks to Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs about the speculation that one of the Baltics may become the theater for “World War III.”

Read more at http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/latvia-heads-into-2017-relying-on-its-own-mettle-and-nato-metal.

In the third episode of our Global Risks 2035 series, host Alex Ward speaks to John Hudson, a senior reporter at Foreign Policy magazine, and Amy Zalman, former president and CEO of the World Future Society. They discuss how the future will change depending on America’s actions, and how certain events will occur and shape the global context no matter what America does.

For more information on the Atlantic Council’s Strategy Initiative, check out ACstrategy.net, and engage with us on social media using hashtag #Lifein2035. If you have any videos or ideas about the world in 2035 that you want to submit to us, please do so at Lifein2035@atlanticcouncil.org.

We’re delighted that one of Europe’s top-ranked women joined us for this “inaugural” show: Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, also a vice president of the European Commission (EC). She agreed to speak to Teri Schultz, the host of this podcast, just a few hours after Donald Trump was confirmed as the next US president, a development which shocked Brussels along with all those American pollsters. Mogherini says the phrase that has stuck with her from Obama’s first White House campaign was that “everything is possible in America”. It meant one thing during the election of America’s first black president in 2008. Now, she notes pointedly, two very different interpretations are possible.

This is the second episode in a three-part series on the Atlantic Council’s landmark report, Global Risks 2035: Search for a New Normal, by Mathew Burrows, director of the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Foresight Initiative. In this episode, Alex Ward, associate director at the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, speaks with August Cole, the co-author of Ghost Fleet, and Madeline Ashby, the author of vN, two science fiction writers who help us think completely differently about the many possibilities the future holds.

For more information on the Atlantic Council’s Strategy Initiative, check out ACstrategy.net, and engage with us on social media using hashtag #Lifein2035. If you have any videos or ideas about the world in 2035 that you want to submit to us, please do so at Lifein2035@atlanticcouncil.org.

When someone with the long-range perspective of Alexander “Sandy” Vershbow says relations with Russia are the worst he’s seen in his entire career, everyone should take notice. Vershbow has been a student of the Soviet Union and Russia for many decades, rising to the highest levels of the US State Department, the Pentagon and NATO. Before his recently-ended tenure as NATO’s deputy secretary general, Vershbow had served as the American ambassador to the Alliance from 1998 to 2001 and to Moscow from 2001 to 2005. With all that Russia-watching history, Vershbow says he’d have to go back to the Berlin crises of the early 1960s to imagine “as volatile and unpredictable and dangerous a situation as we have now.”

On November 30, 2016, The Atlantic Council released the Middle East Strategy Task Force: Final Report of the Co-Chairs by former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and former National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley. The Atlantic Council convened the Middle East Strategy Task Force (MEST) in February 2015 to examine the underlying issues of state failure and political legitimacy that drive extremist violence and threaten fundamental interests broadly shared by the peoples of the region and the rest of the world. The result of almost two years of intensive study, Albright and Hadley’s final report proposes nothing short of a paradigm shift in how the international community and the Middle East interact. Not only does the report present solutions to the region’s most immediate crises in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya, it also puts forward a pragmatic and actionable long-term strategy that emphasizes the efforts of the people of the Middle East themselves, with an eye toward harnessing the region’s enormous human potential. The event was introduced by Mr. Frederick Kempe, President and CEO of the Atlantic Council, and moderated Mr. Ayman Mohyeldin, Foreign Correspondent of NBC News and Anchor of MSNBC.

On November 16, 2016, Dr. Marlene Laruelle, Mr. Neil Barnett, and Dr. Alina Polyakova, who were joined by Dr. Andreas Umland, Dr. Mitchell Orenstein, Dr. Péter Krekó, and Mr. Josh Rogin, launched their report The Kremlin’s Trojan Horses: Russian Influence in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, a new report from the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu’s Eurasia Center. Unlike in Central Eastern Europe, Moscow’s tactics in the West are purposely subtler and difficult to trace. This report documents how the Russian government cultivates relationships with ideologically friendly political parties, individuals, and civic groups to build an army of Trojan Horses across European polities. This network of political allies, named in the report, serves the Kremlin’s foreign policy agenda that seeks to infiltrate politics, influence policy, and inculcate an alternative, pro-Russian view of the international order.

The report presents three cases, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, each written by a leading expert: Dr. Marlene Laruelle, director of the Central Asia Program and associate director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University; Mr. Neil Barnett, chief executive officer of Istok Associates; Dr. Stefan Meister, director, Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia, Robert Bosch Center, German Council on Foreign Relations; and Dr. Alina Polyakova, deputy director of the Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center and senior fellow with the Future Europe Initiative at the Atlantic Council.

Islamophobia is on the rise in non-Muslim-majority countries. Following the recent spate of global terrorist attacks, Muslims are increasingly portrayed negatively by the media. Furthermore, some US politicians and their European counterparts have proposed an array of policies – from policing Muslim communities to controlling the flow of refugees and migrants from the Middle East.

On October 20, 2016, our distinguished group of panelists addressed issues including the media’s influence on shaping public perceptions of Islam and Muslims; the role policymakers can and should play in bridging the gap between Muslim and non-Muslim communities; and the role art and cultural institutions can play in shifting the narrative to a more inclusive and productive discussion.

The panel features Karen Armstrong, author and commentator on comparative religion; Dr. Mehmet Aydin, former Turkish Minister of State; Vali Nasr, dean of the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University; and Zainab Salbi, host of Zainab Salbi Project of the HuffPost Originals. Ms. Vuslat Doğan Sabancı, vice president of the Aydın Doğan Foundation and publisher of Hürriyet, delivered welcoming remarks, and Frederick Kempe, President and CEO of the Atlantic Council moderated the discussion.

In the four years since the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2030 was published, the biggest change in the world is the increased risk of major conflict. In 2012, a large-scale US/NATO conflict with Russia or China was close to unthinkable. Now, the post-Cold War security order has broken down, and the consequences are immense, potentially threatening globalization itself.

In Global Risks 2035: Search for a New Normal, Mathew Burrows, director of the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Foresight Initiative and author of Global Trends 2030, analyzes geopolitical and technological trends to present five alternative futures based on how well global actors may respond, react, and adapt to growing uncertainty and change. A panel, consisting of report author Mathew Burrows, Millennium Leadership Fellow Samantha Vinograd, Former US Ambassador to Mexico and Argentina Earl Anthony Wayne, and Director of Communications for 1776 Erin McPike, discussed the highlights of Burrows’ report and then responded to questions from the audience on September 22, 2016. The original report can be found here.

In light of a shrinking force structure and limited resources despite increasing global commitments, our panelists David Barno and Nora Bensahel, senior fellows at the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security; Brad Carson, former Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness at US Department of Defense provide a range of recommendations in three distinct time horizons to help Army leaders build the next Army successfully. From the Army Today, 2016-20, the Army of Tomorrow, 2020-25, and the Army of the Day After Tomorrow, 2025-40+, Barno and Bensahel offer fresh ideas that spark debate, challenge hoary assumptions, and animate the need for change. The event took place on September 21. 2016, moderated by Missy Ryan of the Washington Post. The original report by Barno and Bensahel is available here.

On September 9, 2016, our panelists Chris Bakemeyer, deputy assistant secretary for Iran at the US Department of State; David Mortlock, nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center; and Barbara Slavin, acting director of the Atlantic Council’s Future of Iran Initiative discussed the outlook for investment in Iran, the ongoing status of existing sanctions, and the broader context of US policy towards Iran. We delved into the implications of these trends both for policymakers and private sector leaders considering investment opportunities in Iran. Richard Morningstar, Founding Director and Chairman of the Global Energy Center, delivered welcoming remarks, and Yeganeh Torbati of Reuters moderated the discussion.

The first episode in a three-part series on the Atlantic Council’s landmark report, Global Risks 2035: Search for a New Normal, by Mathew Burrows. Alex Ward, associate director at the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, Tyler Sweatt, an expert from Toffler Associates, and Jasmine El-Gamal, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council take you on a tour of how we arrived at this point in global history, and how the trends that define this age may lead to tomorrow’s risks.

For more information on the Atlantic Council’s Strategy Initiative, check out ACstrategy.net, and engage with us on social media using hashtag #Lifein2035. If you have any videos or ideas about the world in 2035 that you want to submit to us, please do so at Lifein2035@atlanticcouncil.org.

On the heels of recent tragic and perhaps paradigm-shifting events such as the Nice attack and Turkish coup attempt, Atlantic Council’s Senior Fellow Michael Weiss and Jasmine El-Gamal analyzed the Anti-ISIS Coalition’s progress in a special members and press call. The call was convened on July 19, moderated by Bilal Saab, director of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Peace and Security Initiative.

The Atlantic Council’s Members Conference Call series provides members from around the world an exclusive opportunity to speak directly with the work of the Atlantic Council.

Gérard Araud, Ambassador of France to the United States, joins the Atlantic Council’s Future Europe Initiative for a discussion on French leadership in a Post-Brexit Europe.

Following the Ambassador’s remarks, Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Jeremie Gallon engages Ambassador Frederic Hof, Director of the Council’s Rafik Hariri Center on the Middle East; Ms. Laure Mandeville, Atlantic Council Senior Fellow; and Ambassador John Herbst, Director of the Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center to debate France’s role in navigating Europe’s identity and electoral politics, developing and implementing a more coherent strategy to the south, and ensuring strength and unity in the face of a revisionist Russia. The event took place on July 28, 2016.

As news continued to flow in in regarding the attempted coup in Turkey on July 15, analysts Sir Peter Westmacott, Aaron Stein, and Matthew Bryza joined in on a Members Conference Call to provide analysis for the future of Turkish politics, and the implications for the fight against ISIS. The conference call took place on July 18, 2016.

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, is one of the most important trade agreements in history. In the following program, European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom discusses the future of TTIP and transatlantic trade relations. The event took place on June 29, 2016.

On June 27, 2016, in light of Britain’s historic vote to leave the European Union, the Atlantic Council discussed what the US, UK, and crucial European Allies must do to bolster NATO’s strength and solidarity, especially in a post-Brexit Europe. We also launched a report on “Restoring the Power and Purpose of the NATO Alliance”, authored by Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns and General James L. Jones, who presented their final conclusions. The event was moderated by Evelyn Farkas.

General Philip M. Breedlove, former Commander of US European Command and former Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO, spoke at the Atlantic Council’s public conference: The Future of NATO Enlargement and New Frontiers in European Security. Frederick Kempe, President and CEO of Atlantic Council, moderated the discussion. The conference was held on June 8, 2016.

What’s the nature of modern Russian propaganda? Our panel of four journalists from Russia and Ukraine discuss the changing face of Kremlin propaganda. The panelists were Masha Gessen, journalist and author of The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin; Vasily Gatov, visiting fellow at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism; Daria Dieguts, foreign correspondent of TV Channel “Ukraine”; and Natalka Pisnya, special reporter and head of bureau in the United States for 1+1 Media Group. The discussion focused on the challenges facing independent Russian-language journalism, and was moderated by Karina Orlova, a journalist with Echo of Moscow. The event took place on May 23, 2016.

Robert Work, Deputy Secretary at the US Department of Defense, discussed art, narrative, and the third offset in the ending keynote of 2016 Global Strategy Forum on May 2, 2016. The discussion was moderated by August Cole, Director of the Atlantic Council’s Art of the future Project, and introduced by Frederick Kempe, President and CEO of the Atlantic Council.

On May 2nd 2016, the Atlantic Council hosted its second annual Global Strategy Forum. In this episode, you will hear our debate on America’s role in the world between David Rothkopf, CEO and editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy Magazine, and Kori Schake, research fellow at the Hoover Institution. The panel debated the resolution: We must “Make America Great” again. The debate was moderated by Daniel Chiu, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development in the US Department of Defense

On May 2, 2016, the Atlantic Council hosted its second annual Global Strategy Forum. This year’s theme was “America’s Role in the World,” and featured TED-style talks, a formal, moderated debate on America’s Role in a Changing World, as well a final keynote address by Deputy Secretary Robert Work on how fiction and art can help the Third Offset Strategy succeed.

This podcast highlights the first panel, “Strategic Foresight: How a Changing World Affects America”, with panelists Arati Prabhakar, director of DARPA at the US Department of Defense; Jennifer Sciubba, senior fellow at the Strategic Foresight Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security; Amy Zalman, founder and principal of Strategic Narrative Institute; and moderator Deborah Westphal, CEO of Toffler Associates.